No corrupt will be spared, Shah warns from Muzaffarnagar
Kicking off his Lok Sabha polls campaign from Muzaffarnagar, Amit Shah accuses the opposition alliance of being guilty of corruption worth ₹12 lakh crore.
LUCKNOW: Union home minister Amit Shah, credited with tapping Modi wave to usher in BJP’s spectacular revival in Uttar Pradesh since 2014, set the tone for the 2024 Lok Sabha campaign from Muzaffarnagar in west UP on Wednesday. He sounded opposition alliance that there would be no letup in action against the ‘corrupt’ under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Accusing the opposition alliance against BJP as ‘ghamandiya gathbandhan (haughty alliance)’, the BJP’s top strategist said the alliance collectively was guilty of corruption worth ₹12 lakh crore.
His remarks had their own significance, particularly following the recent arrest of Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal in connection with the Delhi liquor scam, followed by a joint rally by many opposition parties, demanding Kejriwal’s release and accusing the BJP of engaging in vendetta politics.
“On the day when Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in Meerut to celebrate the Bharat Ratna for Chaudhary Charan Singh, the same day, this alliance held a ‘bhrastachari bacaho (save corrupt)’ rally. They spoke of sheltering the corrupt. But I want to tell the people that in 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said that the corrupt would be behind bars, and in 2024 too, we are saying the same thing,” he said.
Engaging with the audience on the subject, he asked, “Tell me, should those who engage in corruption be behind bars or not?” The audience responded with a loud ‘yes’ and Shah then went on to target the opposition with the dynastic rule jibe.
To set the BJP’s ‘400 paar (over 400 seats)’ national agenda, Shah targeted the Samajwadi Party as he tweaked the ‘palayan (exodus)’ issue to pitch the BJP as the only party capable of keeping the criminals on a tight leash.
After the breakup with RLD, the SP has now teamed up with Congress in a bid to unsettle the BJP in the west, where the seven-phased polls would begin on April 19. The BJP, powered by the support of the Rashtriya Lok Dal, a party primarily of Jats, a key OBC caste in the ‘Jat land’ in west UP, is exuding an air of confidence. The ‘palayan’ issue has good recall value in west UP.
In June 2016, the then BJP stalwart from the region, the late Hukum Singh, had flagged the issue of Hindu exodus from the region. This concern arose soon after the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots, which further polarised the Jat belt and emerged as a key election issue in the 2017 UP polls. Since then, it has been consistently highlighted in subsequent elections.
On Wednesday, Shah began his speech by invoking former Prime Minister Chaudhary Charan Singh, a popular political figure in the region and grandfather of RLD chief Jayant Chaudhary. He recalled how, in his initial days in UP in 2013-2014, he had witnessed the issue of ‘palayan’ under the then Samajwadi Party rule.
“Back then, I remember that as the BJP in-charge, how the people of the region were plagued by ‘palayan’ (exodus) in Kairana, Muzaffarnagar, and Saharanpur. None were safe, but in 2017, the Yogi Adityanath government checked the exodus and ensured people’s safety. That wasn’t all. Now, instead of commoners, the ‘palayan’ has shifted to criminals, on the run and fleeing out of the state,” he said.
“Tell me, will you defeat the Samajwadi Party in all the seats?” he asked the audience, who waved back at him.
Despite a sore throat, Shah, powered by the enthusiastic response from the audience, also touched upon two key aspects of BJP’s agenda that have been accomplished – the scrapping of Article 370 and the Ram Temple in Ayodhya. “I want to ask you, is Kashmir ours?” he asked the audience, who appreciated the query with a resounding “haan (yes)”.
He asked: “Then tell me, why didn’t the Congress scrap Article 370 all these 70 years? It was only after Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power that this could be done to ensure Kashmir became an inseparable part of India.” He also engaged with the audience on the Ram temple issue. “Tell me, should a Ram temple in Ayodhya have been constructed or not?” he asked, and as the audience roared back with an expected ‘yes,’ Shah said the Congress party kept on “stalling the issue,” which gained fruition with Modi inaugurating the Ram temple in Ayodhya on January 22 of this year.
The area where Shah was speaking is largely an agrarian region known mostly for sugarcane farming and from where the opposition has been flagging the issue of ‘a law guaranteeing MSP’ on farmers’ produce. However, Shah positioned the BJP as the party that had made the maximum purchases from farmers under MSP (minimum support price), assuring farmers of selling their crops at a certain price. Shah also referred to the issue of sugar mill closures during the BSP-SP governments, another sensitive issue in the region.
“During the BSP’s tenure, 11 sugar mills were closed, and during the SP’s tenure, 10. In contrast, the BJP ensured that 20 sugar mills were reopened, and five new ones are now functional,” Shah said, aiming to connect with Jat sugarcane farmers who dominate the region.
He also highlighted the government’s policy of producing ethanol from sugarcane and mentioned that as of now, 156 crore litres of ethanol have been produced to assist sugarcane farmers.